Connor, James A. 1951–

PERSONAL:

Born 1951, in Washington, DC; married; wife's name Beth. Education: California State University at Northridge, bachelor's degree; St. Meinrad School of Theology, IN; University of Iowa, Ph.D.; also two master's degrees.

ADDRESSES:

Home—Pocono Mountains, PA. Office—English Dept., Kean University, 1000 Morris Ave., Union, NJ 07083. E-mail—[email protected]; [email protected].

CAREER:

Writer and educator. Spent eighteen years as a Catholic priest and member of the Jesuit order, where he worked as a teacher and ministered to Native Americans. Kean University, Union, NJ, faculty member, 1999—. Also a director of studies at the Lessing Institute in Prague; held posts at St. Louis and Gonzaga universities.

WRITINGS:

God's Breath and Other Stories, Paulist Press (New York, NY), 1998.

Silent Fire: Bringing the Spirituality of Silence to Everyday Life, Crown (New York, NY), 2002.

Kepler's Witch: An Astronomer's Discovery of Cosmic Order Amid Religious War, Political Intrigue, and the Heresy Trial of His Mother, HarperSanFrancisco (San Francisco, CA), 2004.

Pascal's Wager: The Man Who Played Dice with God, HarperSanFrancisco (San Francisco, CA), 2006.

Also author of the Ideablog. Contributor of essays to periodicals, including the Critic, Iowa Review, Iowa Journal of Literary Studies, American Book Review, Traditional Home, and Willow Springs.

SIDELIGHTS:

James A. Connor spent nearly two decades as a Catholic priest in the Jesuit order before leaving the priesthood, getting married, and devoting his life to writing and teaching. His first book, God's Breath and Other Stories, features tales for adults and children. Some are whimsical and religious at the same time, as in the story of a town that outlaws growing lilacs because they are too messy and in the end faces a hobo who is really a prophet. In another, a self-centered college student encounters his dying grandfather.

Connor turned from fiction to introspection with his next book, Silent Fire: Bringing the Spirituality of Silence to Everyday Life. The book is based on a journal that Connor kept as a Catholic priest struggling to reconcile the hardships of life with his ministry. Shortly after being ordained, he was assigned to a parish where a young couple was dealing with the death of their baby. While the couple was driving through a canyon during a vacation, a boulder came loose from the surrounding mountains and hit the car, crushing the child but leaving the couple unharmed. Connor faced the task of "explaining" how such a thing could happen. After two days with the parents, Connor was so deeply troubled that he announced he would be leaving the parish to go on a retreat. Eventually he landed in the wilds of the Canadian province of British Columbia. In the book Connor describes his struggle with his faith and his attempt to reconnect to God, ultimately entering into a period of silence and solitude from which he emerged a changed man. Writing in the National Catholic Reporter, Robert Durback called the author's style "reminiscent of Annie Dillard—penetrating in detail, poetic, a visionary in his element." Durback also noted: "His gift to his readers is sharing in his solitude, inviting us to flee from the noise with which we fill our lives and to discover with him the peace of four levels, or ‘circles of silence.’" A Publishers Weekly contributor commented: "This exquisite book is desperately needed in a world too much in love with auditory stimulation."

Connor exhibits his wide-ranging talent and interests in his book about the astronomer Johannes Kepler. In Kepler's Witch: An Astronomer's Discovery of Cosmic Order Amid Religious War, Political Intrigue, and the Heresy Trial of His Mother, Connor uses witchcraft trial records, testimonies, Kepler's diary entries, and correspondence that the author has translated into English for the first time to reveal one of science's most important early figures—the man who discovered the fundamental laws concerning the motions of the planets and laid the foundation for Isaac Newton's subsequent development of the basic laws of physics. As noted by a Publishers Weekly contributor: "This is not the Kepler one might know from textbooks—Connor's Kepler is a man driven by his deep Lutheran faith … a man who seems less concerned with greatness than truth and a little bit of peace and happiness." Kepler faced a turbulent political climate in his time, which was marked by religious unrest. At one point, his mother was brought to trial on trumped-up charges of being a witch, an episode that Connor employs to reflect upon Kepler's devotion to his Lutheran faith. At the same time, Connor shows how Kepler based his scientific findings and theories on objective principles to a far greater degree than did his contemporaries. Nevertheless, many later scholars shrugged off much of Kepler's work because he often, as noted by Bryce Christensen in Booklist, "framed his science in the language of worship." Christensen went on to note: "This luminous biography will help remedy that injustice." A Kirkus Reviews contributor commented that "the author admirably sets Kepler within the important context of his faith."

In Pascal's Wager: The Man Who Played Dice with God, the author once again writes about a scientist whose spiritual or mystical beliefs played a large role in his life. This time the author writes of Blaise Pascal, a seventeenth-century mathematician whose major contributions included mechanical calculators and advances in concepts of pressure and vacuum. Less well known are Pascal's philosophical writings and his belief in Jansenism, a movement within the Catholic Church that stressed predestination, original sin, and the need for divine grace. In his biography, Connor explores these beliefs in relation to Pascal's domestic life and discusses what is known as "Pascal's Wager," which is drawn from the writings of Pascal that say it is better for a person to believe in God than take the chance of not believing in God and suffering the implied consequences to the immortal soul. "Well written and well informed … this biography should interest readers drawn to the crossroads of religion and science," wrote Gilbert Taylor in Booklist. A Publishers Weekly contributor called Pascal's Wager "a compelling and readable study of one of the most influential thinkers in religious history."

BIOGRAPHICAL AND CRITICAL SOURCES:

BOOKS

Connor, James A., Silent Fire: Bringing the Spirituality of Silence to Everyday Life, Crown (New York, NY), 2002.

PERIODICALS

Booklist, December 1, 2001, June Sawyers, review of Silent Fire, p. 608; March 1, 2004, Bryce Christensen, review of Kepler's Witch: An Astronomer's Discovery of Cosmic Order Amid Religious War, Political Intrigue, and the Heresy Trial of His Mother, p. 1119; October 1, 2006, Gilbert Taylor, review of Pascal's Wager: The Man Who Played Dice with God, p. 24.

Kirkus Reviews, February 1, 2003, review of Kepler's Witch, p. 116.

Library Journal, April 1, 2004, Hilary D. Burton, review of Kepler's Witch, p. 118.

National Catholic Reporter, July 19, 2002, Robert Durback, review of Silent Fire, p. 18.

Publishers Weekly, October 29, 2001, review of Silent Fire, p. 58; April 12, 2004, review of Kepler's Witch, p. 57; August 14, 2006, review of Pascal's Wager, p. 200.

ONLINE

HarperCollins Web site,http://www.harpercollins.com/ (September 5, 2007), brief profile of author.

James A. Connor Home Page,http://www.jaconnor.com (September 5, 2007).

Kean University Web site,http://www.kean.edu/ (September 5, 2004), Faith Jackson, "Kean Professor Pens Groundbreaking Book about Johannes Kepler"; Amy Meckeler, "Silent Fire, by James A. Connor, Receives Starred Review."